Mr. Americas

Tuesday

May 4, 2004 at 12:01 AM

Teresa Wiltz The Washington Post

Inside the studio at the National Press Building, calls are streaming into "Bienvenidos a America" -- visa worries, green card freakouts, dramas writ large and painful. The problems are real, but jokes are flying back at them, disarming the distress, flitting about the padded walls of the Hispanic Radio Network.

"I thought so," says the Cuban-born Pertierra, his smooth, modulated radio voice morphing into Mexicanese. "Because with that accent, you couldn't possibly be Dominican."

"Andale! Go on!" the man sputters, laughing.

"Andale! Orale!" Pertierra responds.

Pertierra jokes, the better to bond, to find connections in a multinational community with wildly differing cultures, histories, traditions and, yes, accents. But it's also a way to make the legalese go down a little more smoothly, a spoonful of humor to make talk of 245-I laws and H-1-B visas more palatable. He's been in their position, knows what it's like to be the newcomer in a land you don't quite understand. Forty-two years here, U.S. citizenship, a George Washington University law degree and an American accent don't change that -- the feeling you don't quite belong. Except that when you go back to the place that you once called home, you don't quite feel as though you belong there, either.

"I am," he says, "neither here nor there."

And so he sits, for an hour every Thursday afternoon, earphones wrapped around his head. He talks to a U.S.-born Tejano, who four years ago married a Mexican from across the border. He wants her with him, and as a U.S. citizen it is his right. But the U.S. Embassy official in his wife's hometown took one look at the Tejano's black hair and brown face, and assumed he was an illegal alien trying to pull a fast one. Birth certificate? High school diploma? Voter registration card? No matter. Case denied.

"You've got to call the press. This is a case of racism. There is no one face that's American. There are people that think that an American face is blond, with blue eyes, pale skin. But in this country, all colors are American."

"It's a wonderful opportunity to have some sort of impact," Pertierra, 52, says of his radio show. "Or at least to politicize the people who think they don't have the power to change things. And they do have that power. If only they used it.

"I went to law school not to interpret the law," he continues, "but to change it."

Adaptation

Pertierra learned about the power to change things early on. His family emigrated from Cuba to the States in 1961, when he was 9, for reasons that had less to do with communism and more to do with family drama. His mother loathed her mother-in-law, and figured the revolution was as good an excuse as any to move as far from her as humanly possible.

But Miami was full of Cubans, and Pertierra's mother, one of the first women to graduate from the University of Havana Law School, started looking over her shoulder again.

"She was afraid the old lady was going to join us in Miami," Pertierra says with a laugh, so his mother took advantage of a government program "that paid Cubans to get the hell away from Miami. They bought us all a one-way ticket."

They ended up in Long Beach, suburban Los Angeles. "I didn't speak English," Pertierra says. "I was thrown in like a boy who's thrown into a swimming pool to learn to swim.

"When you're 10 years old," he says, "you will learn English very quickly."

He came to Washington in the mid-'70s because a Jesuit priest told him he'd make a good philosopher, enrolling at Georgetown on a graduate fellowship. After five years he found he wanted not just to think, but to do. So he enrolled at the George Washington Law School. There were people flooding into this country, fleeing wars in Central America, whom he saw being mistreated by immigration officials. He worked with a law firm that had a prepaid legal services plan for union members. There he learned to do immigration law, law that impacted "normal working people, busboys, cooks.

"That's what I did then, that's what I enjoy doing now," he says.

He's not a rich man. Drives a Nissan, not a BMW. It's worth it, he says, because he believes he was meant to take two special cases: those of Elian Gonzalez and Jennifer Harbury.

Notable cases

Everywhere in his Washington office are photos of Elian Gonzalez, the boy who became an international cause celebre after he was found floating in the waters between Cuba and Miami. Pertierra was one of the lawyers representing Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez.

Pertierra said publicly that the boy should be with his father, clashing with representatives from the Cuban American National Foundation and Washington lawmakers of Cuban descent.

Jennifer Harbury was an American lawyer married to a Guatemalan rebel leader, Efraim Bamaca, who was tortured and killed. Implicated in the death was a Guatemalan military officer, who records showed was on the CIA payroll.

"I had just found out that my husband was not only dead, but had been torn limb from limb in a hidden cell," says Harbury. Pertierra "was the kindliest person I could ask for,"

Harbury fought both the Guatemalan and U.S. governments for information about her husband's death. When she got nowhere, she camped out for weeks in Guatemala, in a hunger strike that drew international media attention. Pertierra didn't want her to do the hunger strike. He knew she would be a target. He didn't quite expect himself to be one, too. In 1996, his car was firebombed in his driveway.

"He was his wonderful self. He was jovial and supportive and he didn't let it stop him one bit," Harbury says.

In 2002, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights ordered the Guatemalan government to investigate Bamaca's death and punish his killers. It also ordered the government to pay $498,000 in reparations to Bamaca's family and return his body.

By Teresa Wiltz

The Washington Post

Inside the studio at the National Press Building, calls are streaming into "Bienvenidos a America" -- visa worries, green card freakouts, dramas writ large and painful. The problems are real, but jokes are flying back at them, disarming the distress, flitting about the padded walls of the Hispanic Radio Network.

"I thought so," says the Cuban-born Pertierra, his smooth, modulated radio voice morphing into Mexicanese. "Because with that accent, you couldn't possibly be Dominican."

"Andale! Go on!" the man sputters, laughing.

"Andale! Orale!" Pertierra responds.

Pertierra jokes, the better to bond, to find connections in a multinational community with wildly differing cultures, histories, traditions and, yes, accents. But it's also a way to make the legalese go down a little more smoothly, a spoonful of humor to make talk of 245-I laws and H-1-B visas more palatable. He's been in their position, knows what it's like to be the newcomer in a land you don't quite understand. Forty-two years here, U.S. citizenship, a George Washington University law degree and an American accent don't change that -- the feeling you don't quite belong. Except that when you go back to the place that you once called home, you don't quite feel as though you belong there, either.

"I am," he says, "neither here nor there."

And so he sits, for an hour every Thursday afternoon, earphones wrapped around his head. He talks to a U.S.-born Tejano, who four years ago married a Mexican from across the border. He wants her with him, and as a U.S. citizen it is his right. But the U.S. Embassy official in his wife's hometown took one look at the Tejano's black hair and brown face, and assumed he was an illegal alien trying to pull a fast one. Birth certificate? High school diploma? Voter registration card? No matter. Case denied.

"You've got to call the press. This is a case of racism. There is no one face that's American. There are people that think that an American face is blond, with blue eyes, pale skin. But in this country, all colors are American."

"It's a wonderful opportunity to have some sort of impact," Pertierra, 52, says of his radio show. "Or at least to politicize the people who think they don't have the power to change things. And they do have that power. If only they used it.

"I went to law school not to interpret the law," he continues, "but to change it."

Adaptation

Pertierra learned about the power to change things early on. His family emigrated from Cuba to the States in 1961, when he was 9, for reasons that had less to do with communism and more to do with family drama. His mother loathed her mother-in-law, and figured the revolution was as good an excuse as any to move as far from her as humanly possible.

But Miami was full of Cubans, and Pertierra's mother, one of the first women to graduate from the University of Havana Law School, started looking over her shoulder again.

"She was afraid the old lady was going to join us in Miami," Pertierra says with a laugh, so his mother took advantage of a government program "that paid Cubans to get the hell away from Miami. They bought us all a one-way ticket."

They ended up in Long Beach, suburban Los Angeles. "I didn't speak English," Pertierra says. "I was thrown in like a boy who's thrown into a swimming pool to learn to swim.

"When you're 10 years old," he says, "you will learn English very quickly."

He came to Washington in the mid-'70s because a Jesuit priest told him he'd make a good philosopher, enrolling at Georgetown on a graduate fellowship. After five years he found he wanted not just to think, but to do. So he enrolled at the George Washington Law School. There were people flooding into this country, fleeing wars in Central America, whom he saw being mistreated by immigration officials. He worked with a law firm that had a prepaid legal services plan for union members. There he learned to do immigration law, law that impacted "normal working people, busboys, cooks.

"That's what I did then, that's what I enjoy doing now," he says.

He's not a rich man. Drives a Nissan, not a BMW. It's worth it, he says, because he believes he was meant to take two special cases: those of Elian Gonzalez and Jennifer Harbury.

Notable cases

Everywhere in his Washington office are photos of Elian Gonzalez, the boy who became an international cause celebre after he was found floating in the waters between Cuba and Miami. Pertierra was one of the lawyers representing Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez.

Pertierra said publicly that the boy should be with his father, clashing with representatives from the Cuban American National Foundation and Washington lawmakers of Cuban descent.

Jennifer Harbury was an American lawyer married to a Guatemalan rebel leader, Efraim Bamaca, who was tortured and killed. Implicated in the death was a Guatemalan military officer, who records showed was on the CIA payroll.

"I had just found out that my husband was not only dead, but had been torn limb from limb in a hidden cell," says Harbury. Pertierra "was the kindliest person I could ask for,"

Harbury fought both the Guatemalan and U.S. governments for information about her husband's death. When she got nowhere, she camped out for weeks in Guatemala, in a hunger strike that drew international media attention. Pertierra didn't want her to do the hunger strike. He knew she would be a target. He didn't quite expect himself to be one, too. In 1996, his car was firebombed in his driveway.

"He was his wonderful self. He was jovial and supportive and he didn't let it stop him one bit," Harbury says.

In 2002, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights ordered the Guatemalan government to investigate Bamaca's death and punish his killers. It also ordered the government to pay $498,000 in reparations to Bamaca's family and return his body.